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All Rise...

Judge Victor Valdivia demands a government bailout, because he's too big to fail but not small enough to succeed.

The Charge

Danny Schechter dissects Wall Street fraud.

The Case

Disinformation Company releases several straight-to-DVD documentaries each
year and the vast majority of them are forgettable. They're usually the worst
kind of leftist agit-prop that preach to the converted but don't work as actual
films, since they never really need to. All they need to do is just throw in
some boilerplate buzzwords and catchphrases (i.e. "corporatization,"
"disenfranchisement of minorities") and the company's audience will
buy them anyways. You'd be forgiven for thinking that Plunder would be
yet another tedious and preachy harangue about the evils of
capitalism/conservatism/Republicanism/Fox News Channel. Surprisingly, it's
actually a reasonably thoughtful analysis of the 2008 economic crash. While
filmmaker Danny Schechter (In Debt We Trust) does occasionally fall prey
to some of Disinformation's gimmicks, this is a more sober and informative film
than the company usually issues.

Schechter states that he's interested in examining this story from a
criminal aspect, but don't worry-despite the cover art, he doesn't indulge in
cheap Michael Moore-esque stunts like using yellow crime tape. Instead, he digs
through financial records to examine different types of financial chicanery. He
and a former employee of Bear Sterns, for instance, demonstrate using carefully
compiled trading statistics, how Bear Sterns' stock price was carefully
manipulated by short sellers who were betting that the company would fail and
deliberately floated false rumors that it was doing so. He examines how exactly
banks sold off their interests in subprime mortgages that were probably never
going to be paid off by bundling them together into so-called
"derivatives" that theoretically spread the risk around and made it
infinitesimal, though sadly, not non-existent. He also discusses how AIG insured
every single of these derivatives against default, resulting in a promise to pay
off a sum greater than the entire GDP of every country in the industrial world
combined. These sections, accompanied by interviews with Wall St.
employees both current and former, are a pleasure to watch and easy to
understand. For all the bloviating about the economic scandal that occurred in
the 24-hour news networks, this appears to be the first time that people who
were actually there tell what happened in their own words. The interview footage
that Schechter compiled with cocky hedge fund managers in 2007, the year before
the crash, is especially valuable in demonstrating that people who are
phenomenally well-educated aren't necessarily smart.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Disinformation Co. release without some forced
populist padding. It wasn't really necessary to interview some random artist who
paints pictures of banking and government figures involved in the crash and then
displays them on the street for people to write on. This section is interminable
and wastes valuable time that could have gone into explaining the housing boom
in more depth. Similarly, it's hard not to cringe when Schechter, in a fit of
liberal outrage, proclaims that the marketing of subprime mortgages to
low-income consumers was a "deliberate attempt to disenfranchise
minorities, especially blacks and Latinos." Or, more probably, it was just
a series of shortsighted decisions made by bankers more interested in exceeding
monthly sale quotas and thus padding their paychecks without any consideration
taken for the long-term interests of their companies or, ultimately, the nation
at large. Conspiracy theories may appeal to some, but most of the time bad
decisions can be explained by simple rank stupidity. Despite these lapses,
though, Plunder is, for the most part, not bad at all.

Technically, the disc is mostly solid. Once again, Disinformation Co.
apparently considers quality control an evil right-wing plot, since like many
other of the company's discs this one had a hard time playing in virtually every
DVD player this reviewer tried it out on. If you can get it to work, though, the
anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer looks pretty sharp. Many of the archival news clips
appear to be taken from YouTube, a way to get relevant footage cheap that does
result in admittedly degraded visual quality, but the non-digital interviews
look fine. The stereo transfer is also very good. The extras, however, are a
little thin. Schechter gives a brief statement (9:05) about how and why he made
the film that's a good introduction. There are also two clips of additional
footage, one on liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith (8:13) and the other on
sex addiction on Wall Street (6:13). The Galbraith clip is interesting but the
sex addiction one is irrelevant and pointless. Why not include more information
that fleshes out some of the more complex topics (i.e. how investment bonds are
rated)? With better-chosen extras, this DVD could have been a real
must-have.

Nonetheless, despite its flaws, Plunder is actually worth a look for
anyone curious about the causes of the '08 meltdown. Mostly free of the
ideological excesses that mar other DVDs of its ilk, this one actually digs
deeper and tells the story clearly and coherently. Recommended.